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The choices and actions taken by white southerns in response to Black Americans gaining freedom and liberty during the reconstruction era were setting standards for black men to be able to vote and arrests for petty crimes. The standards for voting were aimed to keep black men from being able to, one of them being able to read. This period being after the civil war, many and many Black Americans were illiterate due to slave owners not wanting to teach the enslaved how to read or write in fear that they might escape. (If you can read, you have the ability to read a map.) The arrests for petty crimes were to keep black men and women legally slaves, such as being unemployed. These "laws" were known as Pig Laws.